This course will become read-only in the near future. Tell us at community.p2pu.org if that is a problem.

Participants will explore & apply techniques and strategies to foster deeper learning using multimedia and graphics.

This course will include an overview of techniques and strategies that research has shown to improve learning outcomes using multimedia and graphics for learning. The role of graphics will be explored to move from the use of graphics from decoration to those that truly foster deeper learning. We will also discuss classroom delivery of multimedia. Participants will apply these concepts to improve and design instructional multimedia.

This course is not on how to create multimedia. Participants should use multimedia they already know how to use.

Week 1: Introducing Multimedia

Outline

Dual Channel: humans have two different processing channels for visual and auditory materials

Limited Capacity: learners have a limited capacity for processing information from each channel

Active Processing: learners must actively engage in the process of learning by selecting and organizing information, then integrate it with prior learning. Active processing results in deeper learning

Note: The multimedia in these presentations may take a minute to fully load after they appear before they will play properly. I uploaded these to a server rather than a video sharing site to retain user control of the progression of the slides.

Additional Materials

What is your experience with the impact of multimedia on learning? What do you think the attributes of effective multimedia are? Do you feel that most educational multimedia is well designed to improve learning?

任务讨论

I find the most effective multi-media is interactive. I like to use hyperlinks for correct and incorrect answer slides to keep the students engaged in the activity. This requires the students to be actively reading or listening to the lesson and serves as a reinforcement activity as well.

This is why I'm exploring more tools. I'd like to insert video inside more interactive platform. Also realized I can export videos from Keynote using links to navigate. Not sure how well it will work yet. If it does, it has more potential for interactivity. Videos can be inserted within slides. Could make button/links to navigate.

I'm looking into MediaWorks as it is fairly inexpensive and has a lot of export options.

The problem I've had with things like this in the past is that you end up limiting what platforms, browsers, versions, etc. can access the stuff. It can make for a giant tech support headache (as you know!).

I do a lot with mobile devices too, and they add another level of complexity to the mix. I guess I've settled on keeping things simpler, even in that means they are suboptimal, so that the most people can use it.

Then you can use other tools (like embedding into web pages or LMSs like Moodle) to add interactivity that way. And if folks are on platforms that don't work with that, they can at least use the "building block" components like the movies separately.

As soon as you step beyond audio, it's all a headache! Any video platform by itself is complicated. Somebody always needs to download a player or converter or something. I use Quicktime as a Mac user and Windows users can get Quicktime, but Linux users cannot. They have players that will play simple videos, but these QT click to advance exports from Keynote don't work. There are always trade offs.

What is your experience with the impact of multimedia on learning? What do you think the attributes of effective multimedia are? Do you feel that most educational multimedia is well designed to improve learning?

I really liked the movie here. I am an extremely visual learner, to the point that audio only material is nearly useless to me. (I can't process audio books for example.) This movie worked for me though because it tapped into both channels (and explained why that works... metacognition was going for me :).

I think the attributes of effective multimedia can be different for different people, but clearly tapping into dual channels and connecting to prior knowledge is very important. I think that tying the multimedia use into active processing is also important.

Unfortunately, I don't think that most educational multimedia is well designed to improve learning. (This includes my own -- but I aim to remedy that with this course!) I think a lot of multimedia is designed to add "bling" to a lesson without a lot of thought to learning except for superficial aspects of engagement.

Thanks, Steve, for putting together such great materials for us to learn from and for "walking the walk."

I have made some really bad multimedia myself. Just today I opened one of my science presentations I created a few years ago that was just awful. Part of what made it so bad is the educational videos that I embedded in it, so it wasn't just my doing. Poor quality (from the instructional efficacy perspective) is the norm.

I'm not sure about what you mean too small for your monitor, but I know what too small means! The file is 512 x 384, but I can go up to 1024 x 768 and upload them, but they will take awhile to load unless you have very fast Internet access. The files I put up was about 8 MB; whereas, the larger one is over 80 MB. I want to make this work--even if I have to set up an ftp or dropbox download. I could even mail a CD to you.